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Sunday, March 18, 2018

For the most part author as he ages has become like a medieval peasant anonymous to the world and future. Nameless and faceless in the place and times in which he lives. Perhaps your life is the same.

Most of us wake up one day to find we do not habitat in Paris, London or Moscow and on Sundays
we don't journey to Chartres cathedral to enter god's house.

Downtown where I live is a sad little place, the inner city, for the last year and maybe the next two a blighted construction zone of demolished buildings roads and sidewalks to nowhere. To my eye as I drive by our downtown ten or twenty construction workers are trying to rebuild fifty years of the lack of growth and vitality as progress moves somewhere else.

Our main industry here is a hospital or two to treat the sick. The once prosperous University that I matriculated is shrinking as students wise up to the student loans realities of the last twenty years.

Still this is a pleasant place to live. My grandchildren are here and once or twice I have taken my grandson into the magnificent catholic cathedral in our town to see the stained glass windows. South of here is a beautiful campus of a college built and maintained by the catholic church. Fifty miles north is a world class city with excellent museums, sports venues and a nice large inland lake.

Places don't change we do. Still tomorrow morning it would be nice to be in France and spend a half hour trying to find eternity in the stained glass windows of the Chartres cathedral.

Friday, March 16, 2018

Speak no more of battlefields,
or empty chairs, or missing chairs,
or children grown, changed and mystifying,
or memories and cherished beliefs doubted,
or changing gods and vanished deities,
or paradoxes of invisible friendships solvable only by linguistics and vanished logic,
subtract one grain of sand and a heap is just a heap, the weaker argument can never be the stronger,
let us be simple, tied up in small busyness,
forgetful of past and unawares of unanticipated future,
stuck in 30 seconds of present,
praying not for delusional double rainbows,
after every disappearing storm,
god is everywhere, and custom and comfort is King.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Back when Warren Crenshaw was a resident early in his medical career some rainy mornings at 4:30 AM after a double shift he would catch a few winks by finding an empty room somewhere on a quiet ward and catch an hour or two of much needed sleep before starting his next very long day.

Today was forty years past Dr. W. Crenshaw's residency and out of ancient habit after driving four hours on a snowy night from Cleveland to Mansfield General Hospital he awoke in a strange bed to find twenty young medical students and nurses surrounding the bed he was sleeping in. Glancing quickly Warren groggily blinked his eyes to reorient himself to time and place; it was 3:45 AM as Warren remembered last night, actually about an hour ago, finding an empty room and bed in a long dark out of the way hall and room of the Mansfield Hospital he was to lecture at later this morning in hopes of catching a few of hours of shut eye before work.

The young residents taking notes crowded close to his bed. The chief Physician obviously from Neurology and a bit too pompous was finishing up a long answer to a student question concerning medical ethics and billing choices as Dr. Crenshaw quickly surmised to his dismay they were talking about himself. He was the patient they were talking about in the example that the chief Physician was discussing and he was the patient in the story example that had been unconscious for a few days and had not signed the legally required intake forms as required by Medicare.

In a panic but thinking carefully Warren looked again to his wrists to check his watch for date and time and verified he had no watch but he did have an IV in his left arm. Moving only his eyes he glanced from student to student and despite his predicament had to smile a bit at their boredom. Been there done that he thought.

The chief Physician droned on about the medical billing question. Sadly Dr. Crenshaw couldn't speak to interrupt when they called the patient in the story a snake charmer, as if that had anything to do with Medical billing ethics anyway thought Warren.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Among-st the endless chitter-chatter of sexual gossip that sloshes about the politics of our times it behooves us to look back into history to other societies to see how the matter successfully was handled in other times and other places.

Different strategies are most fruitful to change the gossiping behaviors of men and women and today we will look at how the Queen of ancient Belgium taught the women of her court discernment.

The bayeux tapestry is over 200 feet long and the actual sewing of the piece was done by the women of Belgium. As they sewed the women often talked quietly among themselves of many things.

As punishment to ladies of the court who tended to gossip of the personal matters of others Queen Matilda wife of William the Norman conqueror would require women at court who gossiped about the sexual matters of others to sit and sew without speaking for weeks and weeks at a time. Listening without talking was considered back in ancient Belgium strict punishment indeed, back back then in ancient times, in Belgium. Today one never hears about the women of Belgium, even now, alleging they were unfairly taken advantage of, what we would call sexual harassment, while being pursued
in times long past. Even the French say, even now, that the people of Belgium are indeed a civilized county.

Fifty seven year old Bernard Patoophee found him self in a strange position this warm March day at the local business college for there was a 60% chance of rain this Tuesday and on his first day back to business school in forty years cadet Patoophee came to find out things had changed here at the local University.

Cadet Patoophee was having trouble traversing the stairs down to section 4 of business secured debt instruments level 1 in the basement of old bolder hall. Each cadet as he ran down the steep stairs past the struggling Bernard three at a time would turn his head slowly to one side make brief eye contact with Mr. Patoophee and like a piano player in formal boogie woogie concert taking a stage bow with just his head and eyes after playing a difficult section of a jazz piece yell loudly as he smiled Sir before racing through the sealed closed iron door of the glass walled classroom. Through the glass of the classroom Bernard watched each cadet as he entered the classroom bow to the instructor at the long desk in the front of the room remove his army style waterproof poncho and immediately plug his computer into the yellow console and begin to type frantically. Within a few seconds like the other students the new arrivee would using only his left hand interrupt his typing briefly to don an ultra slim pair of khaki headphones and commence to bob his head gently left to right repeatedly as he worked.

As he finally entered the heavy iron door Cadet Patoophee accepted the formal bow from his new teacher and took a seat next to the pretty blond girl in the rear of the room. A woman training for the military. Things had certainty changed here at the local university since Cadet Bernard Patoophee's day.

Monday, March 12, 2018

There is a sagacity among Amish women
that allows 300,00 Russian soldiers to surrender to a few thousand German soldiers, more than once,
marching eyes downtrodden hands reaching skyward to wait out behind barb wire until the next war.
Amish women, barns, 8th grade finished educations, and shopping at the goodwill for a doll without a face.
Silent Amish women with anachronistic quaint bonnets and all knowing eyes.
What do you think?
When America's iceman
slips in the door of your one room schoolhouse
and shoots with a rifle at your little girls?

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Sometimes I awake from dreams with time juxtaposed rather oddly. Tonight waking at two thirty in the morning vividly dreams upset my equilibrium.

In dreams I was twelve years old on the football field again and while scrimmaging with some of the gang one of the offensive players who passed away a few years later was prophesying to us about the internet of the future when suddenly he started telling us that we might have to fight in the trenches of WW1 as a group. I awoke suddenly and to calm my mood,

I am imagining myself in another place, a pleasant place of peace and serenity, neither past or present
just somewhere else, somewhere I have been before and enjoyed.

Tonight I imagine and remember myself at the National Art Gallery of London one of the world's premier art galleries. In mind's eye I remember a pleasant two hour walk among-st the exquisite paintings.

First among paintings to me at the National gallery of Art is the Arnolfini Wedding by Van Eyck. You know the work he holds his right hand up formally and wears a funny black hat while she smiles while pregnant. Detail and symbolism abound but what does it mean?

Complete your walk by viewing the Leonardo's Virgin on the Rocks, Raphael's Pope Julius the second, a Vermeer, a few Rembrandt self portraits and the Rokeby Venus by Velazquez.

The national Gallery of Art in London it's a nice another place to spend a little time; better by half than a tour of duty in the trenches as a British or French soldier in WW1.